The Government has won its appeal to overturn a court ruling that effectively widened the grounds on which asylum-seekers could object to being sent back to their home countries.

The House of Lords upheld an argument on behalf of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, that the Court of Appeal wrongly overturned a tribunal ruling that said sending refugees from the strife-torn Darfur region of Sudan to squatter camps near the state capital of Khartoum did not amount to “unduly harsh” resettlement.

The Home Secretary challenged the court’s finding that oppressive conditions in the camps made such resettlement unlawful.

Ms Smith has pledged to review Home Office policy guidance on Sudan in the light of a recent report from the Aegis Trust human rights group alleging torture of failed Darfuri asylum-seekers who were sent to Khartoum on being refused leave to remain in the UK.

In April, the Court of Appeal allowed appeals by three black African Darfuris, all men in their 30s, against rulings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) that they could lawfully be sent back to Sudan.

The judgment had been expected to bring relief to up to 1,000 people who have sought shelter in Britain from the violence and human rights violations in their homeland of Darfur in western Sudan.

The appeal judges rejected the Home Office’s contention that the UK would discharge its international obligations to the persecuted Darfuris by arranging for them to be internally relocated to squatter areas or refugee camps in another part of Sudan.

But today, Lord Bingham, sitting with Lords Hoffmann, Hope, and Brown and Baroness Hale, said the tribunal itself had recognised that many non-Arab Darfuris were ill-equipped for city dwelling slum life, having come mainly from settled rural backgrounds as farmers.

Yet it concluded, after examining all the evidence, that it would not be unreasonable or unduly harsh to relocate such refugees to the camps.

The Court of Appeal’s criticism of the expert tribunal’s finding was not justified, and it was not open to the court or the Law Lords to substitute their own findings.

They could intervene only if the tribunal had made an error of law, which did not occur in this case, the House of Lords said.

Following the ruling, Stephen Twigg, campaigns director at the Aegis Trust, said it was now time for the Home Office to reconsider its guidance on Sudan to ensure that no Darfuris are returned to the country until normality is restored in the region.

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